other 2.5 million people that show up to work every day in minnesota already have the legal protections that enda would extend to workers across the country. and everything seems to be fine. ken, i'm so happy you could be here today to share with the committee how general mills policy of inclusion has contributed to your company's innovation and growth. an impressive 94% of your employees. say that general mills provides a working environment that is accepting of differences and background and lifestyle. i grew up a couple miles from the campus, from your headquarters and beautiful campus, always admired it and enjoyed, as you know, cheerios and wheaties. >> no. >> i've had the opportunity -- we've discussed this at length. i've had the opportunity to visit many of your workers in minnesota, and its parent, that

general mills makes their well-being a top priority. general mills can serve as a model for every company. it's days like today that i'm particularly proud to be a minnesotan. thank you again for your testimony at today's hearing. mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senator franken. and then we have mr. craig partial, senior vice president and general council of the national religious broadcasters association. he's an attorney and has practiced first amendment law and employment law representing clients in the supreme court. and this is your second appearance here. he was at our last hearing two years ago. and we welcome you back. with that, i will just say that all of your statements, which i read last night, are very good. and i will ask permission they all be inserted in the record in their entirety. we'll just go from left to right. if you could just maybe sum up

in five or six minutes or so, seven minutes, something like that, and then we can get into a discussion. i would appreciate it. so ms. badgette, we'll start with you. welcome, and please proceed. >> thank you. is the microphone on? >> no, you've got to punch -- >> okay. good morning, senator harkin and members of the committee. today i will just is up rise three basic points in my written testimony that will document the need for the employment and nondiscrimination act. my first point is that employment discrimination against lease bee an, gay, bisexual and transgender americans whom i'll just call lgbt americans, occurs in workplaces across the country. ek lane gill was a temporary instructor at a community college in texas. she is also a lesbian. when permanent jobs opened up in 2010, she was not allowed to interview for those positions, even though she had received praise from students, from her colleagues and from parents of her students. several of her colleagues, who were equally qualified or actually less qualified, were allowed to interview and were

hired, whereas mrs. gill was not. she was also harassed because of her sexual orientation. her supervisor told her at one point that texas and tarrant county do not like homosexuals. vandy beth glen was fired in 2007 from her job with the georgia general assembly because she is transgender. before he fired her, glen's direct supervisor told her her gender expression was a natural and unsettling and fired her on the grounds that her gender transition was inappropriate and and would make other workers feel uncomfortable. ronality crump is a guy man and police sergeant. his supervisor verbally harassed him because he is gay, comparing him to one of the women in the department, minus the heels and other derogatory comments. when crump filed a complaint, he was transferred from a prestigious position to a less favorable one. we have decades of social science research that tell us those stories are repeated in workplaces across america. in 2008, general social survey

found 42% of lesbian, gay and bisexual people had experienced employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation at some point in their lives, and 27% actually experienced that in the last five years. so it's common and recent. in the largest survey of transgender people to date, 47% of correspondents experienced discrimination in hiring, promotion or job retention. in 2008, my colleagues and i studied the complaints filed by lgbt people in the states that outlaw sexual orientation discrimination. i'll say the numbers of complaints were actually we adjusted those counts to take into account the population sizes of the protected groups. what we found was lesbian, gay and bisexual people filed complaints at roughly the same rate that women and people of color do, suggesting that discrimination is roughly similar in terms of its frequency.

two recent studies actually provide a very vivid picture of discrimination. sociologist tillchicago sent out resumes for job openings for white collar entry level positions in several different states. he quote the one of the resumes as gay by saying the person had been treasurer as the campus gay organization. and the other he left as just a volunteer position at some other nongay organization. he sent them both out to the employers, and the differential treatment of the gay applicants was very clear. to just give a perspective, to get an interview for a job, a gay applicant had to apply for 14 jobs, whereas the head row sexual applicant only had to apply for nine jobs to get an interview. another study sent actual applicants, one transgender and one nontransgender to apply for 24 jobs in the retail sector in new york. in half of those jobs, 12 out of 24, half of the employers, the nontransgender applicant actually got a job offer. in only two 2 of those 24

employers did the transgender applicant receive a job offer. and that's a high degree of discrimination. two decades of research suggest this kind of discrimination has important economic harms, in particular for gay and bisexual men, depending on the study, gay and bisexual men earn from 10% to 33% less than similarly qualified men, most likely because of discrimination. transgender people also have very low incomes. the survey found 15% of their respondents had incomes under $10,000 per year. that's a very low income. 15% of the transgender respondents. the last thing i'll say about the evidence of discrimination, it includes both private sector employees and employees of state and local governments. my williams institute colleagues found exactly the same widespread and persistent pattern of discrimination against lgbt people who work for state governments as we see for

private sector employers. my next two points i'll make much more briefly. the second one, the nondiscrimination laws like enda are likely to reduce discrimination. some of the recent research suggests that both the pay grabs shrink and differential treatment of gay applicants is less in states that have such laws. that makes me think enda can play an important role in reducing discrimination as well. and my third and last point i know you'll hear about, the evidence shows employers would also benefit if approximate enda we were passed. we know businesses are successful when they recruit, hire and retain employees based on what they can do, not who they are, as senator harkin mentioned. that's one reason why 86% of

fortune 500 companies have bans on sexual orientation discrimination and half and would benefit both employees and employers. thank you. >> thank you very much, dr. badgette. and now we turn to mr. kyler rottis. i'll get it right one of these times. frs thank you, senator. >> thank you for being here. please proceed. >> mr. chairman, and members of the committee, i'm very honored to be here today. as mentioned, i'm the executive direct tore of transpeople color coalition. i do various things. i reside in columbia, missouri and am a native of mid missouri. i also teach a historically black college and i'm here to obviously speak in support of inclusion of enda and here to paint a little bit different picture than just the statistics, although the statistics are very important. but as a person that has suffered job discrimination himself. i am a transgender american. i'm a female-to-male transsexual

person that transitioned approximately 20 years ago. the terminology is explained in my testimony, basically there's an umbrella term called transgender that's used to define people whose internal identification is different from their external appearance at birth. and that would be me. for me, the physical transition was more about letting the outer world know who i really was. my internal sense of self has never changed. and i knew who i was internally. people have always related to me as male. that is my essence and my soul. the transition was a matter of actually living the truth. and sharing the truth with the world. rather than living a lie every day and pretending to be somebody that i was not.

prior to any actual medical transition, just to give you a picture of my life, when i and a half debate gated the world, even though my driver's license had female on it, nobody ever saw that. when i would go in to do anything, they would always relate to me as male, and never understood why i had a female gender marker. so obviously it was tough to navigate security, it was tough to navigate employment, where you have to have matching documentation for your employer. and then also the fact that my -- some people were uncomfortable, because i didn't choose one box or the other or fit in one box very clearly. again, not my choice, but just who i was and am. when i used female rest rooms, police would accost me. i would have to strip. and then they still told me, sir, get out of the bathroom when i would use the ladies' room. it's just humiliating.

and dehumanizing, to say the least. so after years of having to navigate these issues, you know, i just chose to go with what was natural for me, and, again, bring my full self to the table and to the world to show the world who i am, and the real me. at work, when i decided to actually transition, i had been there for a number of years, and i am a workaholic and it was disheartening to me that all this could be pulled out from under me because people were uncomfortable with the person that i am. while studying business in college, i assumed, like most students, that i wouldn't encounter any of these difficulties. i was a good person. i was a mid missourian, raiseded with a strong work ethic. both parents, who put us first as their children, and who worked multiple jobs to maintain

a livelihood for their family. i recall, you know, my first job at 5 years old, which i got spending money, and that's how we earned our allowance, by working with our parents at their evening jobs. and was so proud and am a proud person to have that still strong work ethic. prior also to the physical transition, i was working in the financial -- the financial industry, which is actually a high-paying industry. but again, when i shifted or transitioned, that's when all of the trouble began. and it was still -- it's still emotional to me, because it impacted me emotionally. i suffer from post traumatic stress as a result of the harassment the that i encountered in the workplace. from my employer. from not being allowed to change my name or use the name i used. not being allowed to wear my hair a certain way. not being allowed to dress as

me. all these things physically impacted me, and i had -- and still suffer from post traumatic stress and several other things as a result of this. not only that, but i was then unemployed. and to be unemployed is very devastating. also demeaning and demoralizing. and then the recovery time, there is no limit on it. i still have not financially recovered. i'm underemployed. when i do talks, i tell people i'm not employable. i was lucky to be where i am, and i'm happy to be where i am. but i'm one of the fortunate people that is employed. there are many more people like me that are not employed as a result of just being who they are. being good workers, but being transgender or transsexual. so i think it's extremely important that this bill be passed to protect workers like

me. there are many cases that i hear every day, and people call me every day with these cases around the country, because i'm also an attorney that practices and deals with people that suffer employment discrimination. the last thing i will say in wrapping up, because i think i'm out of time, is that it's, again -- i can't emphasize this enough, i still sit here today with almost tears in my eyes, it's devastating. it's demoralizing and dehumanizing to be put in that position. so i urge this committee, particularly, to always include transgender people, because i know that had been an issue in this bill at some point. as we suffer grave discrimination to some of the statistics show most of us, again, make less than $10,000 a year if we're able to be employed. and if we're not, then we have to resort to other means to survive and live, which then make our life even worse. so i thank this committee for allowing me this time to speak. i thank you for considering this, and, again, i strongly

urge the u.s. congress to take this bill up and pass the enda, employment ondiscrimination act. >> mr. broddis, thank you very much. i'm told by my staff that you are indeed the first transgender individual to testify before this senate. i'm proud of this committee. i'm proud of this committee that would invite you here, and this chairman and my staff, i thank you for being here. and i want to commend you for your courage in being here, and for being who you are. because you're going to give courage to a lot of other people. so i commend you for that. thank you very much for being here. >> thank you, sir. now we'll turn to mr. baggenstos, and welcome and please proceed. >> thank you, chairman harken and members of the committee. i appreciate the invitation to testify today in support of this important bill. my testimony today is based on

my experience writing about, teaching about, litigating civil rights employment discrimination cases for most of the past two tech kincaid's, including two assistants in the department of justice, most recently from 2009 to 2011, where i did serve as the principle deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. the employment nondiscrimination act is an exceptionally important bill. it's very much needed. it will be the logical next same time to eradicating workplace discrimination. and i want to talk about three things. first, very briefly, the discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals is a serious problem, and we've heard that. second, that the current legal regime in the states and in the federal government is inadequate to deal with that problem. and third, that the employment and nondiscrimination act is an appropriately tailored remedy for that problem. and i'm, of course, happy to answer any of the committee's questions. as to the first point, i think

everything that needs to be said almost about the harm and impact and extent of discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual individuals has been said by the two witnesses who preceded me on this committee. and it's very difficult to add to that. all i will say is that at the most fundamental level, as senator merkley and chairman harken, you suggested, workplace discrimination against people who are gay or lesbian, who are bisexual or transgender, violates basic american values of equality, opportunity and fair play. if a person can do the job and can do it as well as or better than anyone else, then an employer has no business firing that person or refusing to hire that person, simply because he or she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. i think that's a basic principle. and when employers discriminate against lgbt individuals, they face a really tragic choice. as we have just heard. but the cost isn't just to lgbt individuals.

it's to our economy, it's to our society as a whole. that is why i think you're going to hear that 87% of fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their anti discrimination policies and 41%, a number that's been growing steadily, include gender identity. that's because these companies recognize that their businesses will be more competitive when they hire all talented individuals. but unfortunately, despite the policies of these forward-looking employers, discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals is widespread, and these widespread harms demand a response. but the current law is inadequate to the task. there is a patchwork of state laws that address discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and sometimes transgender individuals. but those laws cover only 16 states for all lgbt individuals. and 21 states for lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals.

and the gaps in their coverage are very significant, as i talk about in my written testimony. and although some federal courts in the eeoc have interpreted over the past ten years title 7 of the civil rights act as addressing parts of this problem, the law under that statute remains uncertain and developing. what we need is a clear federal prohibition of discrimination against lgbt individuals, and that's what the employment and nondiscrimination act would accomplish. enda would respond to these problems by doing nothing more than extend to go sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination the same basic legal structure this country has applied for nearly 50 years to other forms of employment discrimination. the bill takes its operative provisions directly from the brought active provisions of title 7, and the experience that employers have developed over the past five decades in complying with those provisions, the case law that courts have developed, the guidance the eeoc has provided will inform and guide and ease compliance with

enda. one of the title 7 provisions that enda incorporates is one that i know has garnered a great deal of discussion in the past on this committee and elsewhere. and that's the statute's religious and that's the religious exsejs. section six states that statute shall not apply to an organization that's exempt from title vii. section 702a exempts any religious corporation, association, educational institution or society in anything relating to its activities. section 703e-2 exempts any institution of learning that is owned, supported or controlled by a particular religion or

particularly religious corporation or if the curriculum of that school is directed toward the propagation of a particular religion. these have been well settled for decades and been upheld constitutional by the supreme court. this would incorporate them in exactly a clear and broad form. the bill before this committee as the chairman pointed out contains a number of limitations that sharply show the burdens it would impose. notably, not having any claims in the quota and other preferential treatment that narrows the burden it will place on employers. i want to thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of this very important bill. i look forward to answers the committee's questions. >> thank you very much. now, we'll turn to mr. ken charles from general mills. >> good morning. thank you for the opportunity to speak today in support of the

employment nondiscrimination act of 2007 and thank you to the memb members. we're among the world's largest food companies and market some of the world's best loved brands including cheeries green giant and yoplait. we have 35,000 employees wo worldwide. we trace or roots back over 150 years. last fiscal year we had sales of approximately $15 billion. our business case for diversity and inclusion is a simple equation. diversity plus inclusion equals business value. when you combine diversity with a culture that acknowledges, respects and values all of our differences and similarities, good things happen. we find ourselves able to equity

with our consumers. we recruit and retain the talent we need to win now and in the future. we're honored to represent corporate america's support for the passage of the nondiscrimination act. general mills believes this legislation is good for business and good for america because it will help businesses attract and retrain to talent. help provide a safe and comfortable work environment free of any form of discrimination and harassment enabling our employees to bring their full self-to work and help create a culture that creates activity and creation that's vital to the success of all businesses. we market our products to everyone. on everyone u.s. consumers are placing one of our products in their basket every ten seconds.

it makes good business sense to create a work force that represents all of varied consumers and their unique perspectives. we can't win if we access a portion of the strong talented work pool. employees who are members of the glbt community are incredible to our enterprise. talent matters. now more than ever, american business needs to leverage the all sections of our nation. we strive to be an environment where every employee is respected, challenged and rewarded for their individual

contribution and performance. our work environment is built on the foundation of our equal employment opportunity policy which prohibits discrimination based on age, color, religion, sex, origin, disability, citizenship, sexual orientation, gender identify other other characteristics protected by law. we know our policy and our company culture exemplifies it. it's important that we speak to the impact when that's not the case. particularly for glbt employees. would you be engaged, productive, effective if you lived if fear. fear ov losing your job, being denied a promotion.

for many qualified hard working americans this is their experience because they lack the basic protection of a consistent federal law. they're lack of engagement is a tax on american productivity that can be eliminated with the passage. a manager was a recruiter for our company and proudly displayed a picture of his partner on his desk. no different than any other family picture except it has two gay men. being able to share his family portrait allowed him to share his family. i'm proud when i see this diversity represented by all kinds of families within the people's offices in general mills. our cull trur of inclusion has been regularly recognize bid a variety of external groups. just this april general mills was recognized as the most

reputable company in america. we've achieved a perfect 100 score on the human rights index which recognizes the practices that we are supportive for employees. we know that providing an employment with people of different backgrounds can grow and thrive is essential to our long term success. innovation is the key to survive. this diversity thrive innovation. that fuels our growth, and allows us to win in the global marketplace. that's why we support any practice or public policy. there's several things to encourage diversity. it's safe and open productive environment for general mills employees. our ploys comment on the powerful impact this network has

had on our ability to recruit and retain top talent. we know it's a tangible demonstration of our commitment to advancing every unique opportunity. we also that establishing a culture of respect is a baseline for our employment standards. beyond that we strive to be an employer of choice. a place where we demonstrate support for the personal means of employees to allow them to be fully committed to their work. in 1999 with we introduced domestic partner benefits. in addition to promoting diversity because of the benefits of our business, we support the legislation because we believe it's a fundamental right of all citizens to be treated fairly, with respect and dignity in the workplace

regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. our support mirror the state in which we are headquarters, minnesota, which is one of 21 states with laws preventing discrimination on sexual orientation and one of the 16 that includes gender identity. our company values clearly state we do the right thing all of the time. thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. it's an honor to be here. >> thank you, mr. charles. >> it's a pleasure being back here again. national religious broadcasters is a nonprofit association representing and supporting and defending the first amendment interest of christian